Before lockdown, my biggest worry was where my waxwork head had gone. How trivial that sounds now

After a brief foray into House Party and Zoom, I’ve settled into a new routine doing star jumps with my sons and reading, writes Anneka Rice

Shelf life: Hilary Mantel is helping me through (Getty/iStockphoto)

I did some more stand-up comedy in February. It was at the Backyard Comedy Club in London’s Bethnal Green. There were queues round the block and I nearly cried with gratitude that people had come along. My stand-up was about my missing Madame Tussauds waxwork head. I didn’t even know my body had been dismantled until a journalist casually asked me how I felt now I’d been melted down and my head was in Wookey Hole.

For those who don’t know, Wookey Hole is a complex of caves off the M5 in Somerset, and if you google it you will see row upon row of dismembered wax heads gathering dust. I don’t want my head to be there next to Ronald Reagan and Evonne Goolagong. I later heard from a friend who told me they were pretty sure they’d seen Bill Clinton at the RAF Museum, in a trench. I’d unearthed a scandal.

Our waxwork heads were being sold off for use elsewhere after the museum was done with them and perhaps given a quick costume change and maybe a helmet. There was even an apparent sighting of Generation Game presenter Larry Grayson’s head impaled on a rusty pitchfork at Ramsay Bolton’s castle in Game of Thrones.

I tried to get to the bottom of my missing head but I couldn’t get a sane answer from Madame Tussauds. I was moved on by security when I turned up. The PR lady admitted she had no idea where my head was but that she and her sister used to like watching me on television. Let’s face it, she’s nicked my head and is playing Girl’s World with it.

Anyway, halfway through my stand-up routine I play “Where Are We Now?”, the poignant lament by David Bowie. In innocent old February, I was struggling to work out where my real head was as well as the waxwork. This fame business sometimes does my head in. Once, eight months pregnant, I wandered into the sitting room where the telly was on and there I was on Spitting Image. Kenneth Kendall was directing me, heavily pregnant, to the hospital where I ended up giving birth to son one. Out came a tiny cameraman too. Kenneth was barking instructions down the birth canal “Where are you now, Annie’s baby?” This was quite unsettling for me but imagine if you’re son one and now 30, and you suddenly come across this on YouTube.

Another unsettling thing was meeting all the Baby Annekas that came along to watch my stand-up. My producer had rounded them up as a surprise. They were named after me in the Eighties and Nineties. One Anneka had been named after me because her mum, in hospital after giving birth, saw a trailer for Challenge Anneka on Ceefax and thought “that’ll do”. The word “Ceefax” got a long laugh from half of the audience. Everyone else looked blank.

But all that was back in February. How trivial and silly it all seems. Now in April that Bowie song really means something. Where are we now, indeed. It seems that those of us who aren’t key workers and being utterly heroic are being utterly ridiculous. We need to stop and take a hard look at the steady creep of FOMO. Instagram and Twitter is a whirligig of yoga and craft classes.

There are timetabled activities and I’m not talking for the kids. At 9am, for example, you can join Joe Wicks for a live exercise class. I tried this because Clare Balding told me about him. When I tuned in he was dressed as Spiderman and we had to lunge around doing spider moves for half an hour. Am I missing something? Is this something horsey people enjoy exclusively or did I wander into a superhero class by mistake.

I have sons one and three at home and son one’s girlfriend. We work all day and meet to do some exercise at the end of the day. It has made me ridiculously happy doing star jumps with my sons. And I’ve learned to slip in subtle computer tech queries while I’m serving up the soup. I haven’t had one “have you tried turning it off and on” back at me.

Often we all panic that we should be taking up Spanish, learning how to make puff pastry, but mostly we just open a bottle of wine. To start with, in the olden days, three weeks ago, there were many Zoom get-togethers with people on the outside. Girlfriend one had a very successful hen party. I had a not so successful House Party with my Strictly gang. It was chaos. Two children ran around noisily and we all drifted away out of our boxes.

More worrying was a Zoom yoga class. Halfway through as everyone in their squares attempted a handstand, up popped a strange bloke, in a whole new square, doing something quite different with his hand. How did he get there? It reminded me of when I did panto at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge and a gentleman sent some of his bodily fluids in a bottle to stage door, with a note saying, “If Anneka doesn’t get this, please pass on to Sue Lawley.”

So we have stripped everything back. I am gently painting nightingales for the Horatio’s Gardens charity and reading Hilary Mantel. And I am making puff pastry from a cookery book. I also suggest The Repair Shop on BBC1; slow repair, gentle loving care and thoughtful flair. Once a day I call the old ladies I befriend to check they’re okay. Anna, 95, told me yesterday she feels desperately isolated. She says the evenings are the worst, and were it not for her beloved budgie counting on her she’d be rudderless. We all need a bit of a rudder. It’s what makes us tick as humans, the need to be useful. As AA Milne said, “Piglet was so excited about being useful that he forgot to be frightened anymore”.

It’s finding the balance. Helping the Annas to feel connected is frankly more important than getting a six pack or learning origami at this stage, especially if someone’s uninvited appendage could pop into your top right hand square at any moment. So take a deep breath and relax. This could go on a long time.

‘Help! My Head’s in Wookey Hole’ is on BBC Sounds